While
many companies promise that every employee will receive one or two weeks of
training per year, learning should take place every day on the job. Learning
doesn't take place just in training programs, but should be part of every
employee's everyday activities. You learn every time you read a book or
article, every time you observe how someone else is doing work similar to your
own, every time you ask a question. An important part of learning is to build
your own personal learning network -- a group of people who can guide your
learning, point you to learning opportunities, answer your questions, and give
you the benefit of their own knowledge and experience.

I
often use the following four-stage learning model to describe how we learn.

The Four Stages of Learning

Stage 1: Data
Stage 2: Information
Stage 3: Knowledge
Stage 4: Wisdom

In today's business world, we are all inundated with data
(Stage 1) -- all those manuals, brochures, memos, letters, reports, and other
printed material that cross our field of vision every day, not to mention all
that we receive electronically. I once researched how much data was received by
salespeople for a large computer company. The average salesperson received a
stack of mail almost two feet high every month. There is no way that the
salesperson could even look through all of this mail, never mind actually
reading it and learning from it.

Management
expert Peter Drucker has said that when you take data and give it relevance and
purpose, you create information. Information (Stage 2) is the minimum we should
be seeking for all of our learning activities. We need to find ways of sorting
through all of the data that crosses our path and finding that part of the data
that is relevant to our work and for which we have a purpose (to do our jobs
more effectively or efficiently).

Even
when we have information, we must use that information by applying it to our
work before we can say we "know it." Until we use it, it remains
information. Knowledge (Stage 3) comes from applying information to our work.
This is the stage at which most company training programs fail -- too often the
content of company training programs never gets applied to the employee's work.
To me, this means that the investment in that training is totally wasted.

Wisdom
(Stage 4), that most precious possession, comes from adding intuition and
experience to knowledge. For example, in a paper mill, an operator may know
that the mixture of chemicals in a processing vat is correct by the way the
static electricity from that vat affects his hair as he walks by. This learning
can come only from experience -- it cannot be taught in a classroom or
explained in a textbook, but must be personally demonstrated if it is to be
transmitted from one person to another.

Using
this model, we can identify the challenges we face when we want to learn
something new. First, we must sort through all of the available data to find
only that information that is relevant to our learning needs and for which we
have a purpose. Once we have gathered and learned the needed information, we
need to apply it to our work in order to transform it into our personal
knowledge.

One
of the problems inherent in learning something new is that while we are
learning it (in a classroom, from reading a book, taking a computer-based
training course, and so forth) is that we often don't know what questions to
ask. If this is a new area of learning that we have never experienced, we may
think we understand the information, but we won't really know if we have
mastered it until we try to apply it to our jobs. But by the time we get back
to our jobs and try out what we have learned, the learning resource (a trainer
or the author of the book) is no longer available to us to answer the questions
that will inevitably arise. Unless our manager has been through the training,
or has otherwise mastered the skill or knowledge himself,
he cannot answer our questions. So, too often, when we face a problem with the
new methods, we revert back to the old ways -- they may not be as effective or
as efficient, but we know that they work and we know how to use them. This is
why having a personal learning network is so important -- to provide us not
only with pointers to sources of information, but to answer questions, to coach
us, to reinforce our learning when we try to apply it to our work.

Who
should be in your personal learning network? The members of your network do not
need to be people with whom you work directly. In fact, you do not even need to
know the people personally. The members of your network should be people, both
inside and outside of your work group and your company, who have the knowledge
that you are trying to master and who are willing to share their knowledge and
experience with you. Are you trying to master a new manufacturing technique?
You may find someone in another part of your factory or in another one of your
company's factories who has mastered the technique and will be willing to
answer questions as they arise. Or, through the local society of manufacturing
engineers, you may find someone from another company who would be willing to
coach you. Another method of finding a learning resource would be to search the
Internet to find a discussion forum on the topic and, through that forum, find
people who have experience with the technique you are trying to master.

To
establish a learning network, you can ask other people in your group, or with
whom you have gone through a training program, to participate in periodic
discussions as you all try to implement a new way of working, to support each
other and share experiences with each other. Most people are happy to help -- people
generally like to talk about their own work and are honored to be asked to
share their knowledge and wisdom.

Knowledge
is a unique type of economic good. With most economic goods, if you give them
away, you no longer have them. With knowledge, you can give it away and keep
it. In fact, the value of knowledge increases when you share it with others.

Here
is an example of using my own knowledge network. I belong to a group of several
thousand training professionals who share knowledge with each other through an
electronic service provided by an American university. Last year, I was invited
to give a series of seminars in Brazil that
would be simultaneously translated. Never having worked with simultaneous
translation, I sent a message to my network asking for advice from people who
had this experience. Within two days, I had about fifteen responses. Some were
from people who were professional translators, other messages were from people
who had done similar seminars in Brazil and
offered some comments on the Brazilian business community. The most interesting
and useful response came from a seminar manager in Israel who recommended that
I avoid a common error made by American speakers in foreign countries -- he
strongly recommended that I not use any golf stories or baseball analogies,
because people from other countries are not generally familiar with those
sports. This professional network has provided me with a great amount of
learning over the two years I have belonged. The fascinating part of belonging
to this type of network is that of its 5,000 members, I have met only a few in person.

How can your learning network help you?

By helping you to sift through all the data to identify
the information that will be most useful to you.

By helping you to identify learning resources and
opportunities.

By
coaching you and answering your questions as you try to apply your learning to your work.

By sharing their wisdom with you through dialogue.

Building
a personal learning network is requires that you not only seek to learn from
others, but also that you also help others in the network learn. Even when you
are a novice in a field of learning, you can still make contributions. Did you
read an article that might be of interest to others? Then distribute it to
other in your network with a short note that you thought they might find it
interesting. Did you hear of a conference on the subject? Let others know about
the program and speakers and, if you attend, circulate your notes and papers
you collect to other network members.

A
personal learning network can be your most powerful learning tool no matter
what the subject.